Michelle Malkin takes off after the purveyors of H1-b visa abuse.
Aside from the testimony of academics and whistleblowers, she highlights another example of President Obama’s questionable use of executive power to game the immigration system.
Miano’s testimony was particularly important because he explained how the little known “OPT” (Optional Training Program) for foreign students is being used to circumvent H-1B and supply large corporations with cheap foreign labor. President Obama has expanded this regulatory program by unfettered administrative fiat. As Miano noted: “OPT has no labor protections of any kind. Aliens on OPT do not even have to be paid at all. While DHS requires aliens to work in an area related to their major area of study, DHS has no ability to ensure that this happens. Under OPT, over 125,000 foreign workers a year are simply turned loose in America with no supervision or restrictions.”[Testimony of John M. Miano, J.D. before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary March 17, 2015]
Malkin also shows how it is a myth that companies have to offer these jobs to Americans first and demonstrate a need that cannot be filled by American workers.
Many commentators and journalists confuse the labor certification process required for companies applying to obtain green cards (lawful permanent residency status) for H-1B workers with the Labor Condition Application (LCA) process for H-1Bs. Labor certification in the green card process “exists to protect U.S. workers and the U.S. labor market by ensuring that foreign workers seeking immigrant visa classifications are not displacing equally qualified U.S. workers.” Only in extremely narrow and exceptional circumstances do these nominal protections exist in the H-1B LCA process. (Companies must be classified as “H-1B dependent” for the requirements to apply. Big Tech giants like Facebook have been lobbying mightily to avoid the classification.) And even those narrow exceptions are easily and often circumvented by H-1B foreign worker traffickers.
